


Reflections on Power

by mary_pseud



Series: Damnatio Memoriae [11]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Body Modification, Brain Damage, Daleks - Freeform, Gen, Self-Harm, Skaro, Thal-Kaled War, Thousand Year War, War, alternative universe, body swapping, self-neglect, the bunker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-14 07:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17504147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mary_pseud/pseuds/mary_pseud
Summary: "After Security Commander Nyder died, he had a dream."  The Thousand Year War is over!  Skaro has changed, and one man must decide whether his old power is worth reclaiming.  Part of the Damnatio Memoriae AU series.





	1. The Frozen Serpent

After Security Commander Nyder died, he had a dream.

He dreamed he was floating over the battlefields of Skaro, and they were empty. Empty! For a thousand years of war they had been filled with the living and the dying and the dead, but now they were empty. The war was over.

The dream changed; now he was floating through the corridors of the Kaled city. Overhead, cheers and laughter rang from the great dome enclosing the city; but he couldn't laugh, or cheer, or speak.

The dreams faded away into blackness, and he slept the sleep of the dead.

When he finally awoke, Nyder found himself in a strange bed. He blinked up at the ceiling. The last thing he remembered before his dream was being executed (the flames of his pyre rising around him, and worse, the feeling that somehow it did not matter, that it was of no great importance that he was going to die). A ceiling was not what he was expecting to see.

His hand flew out and landed on his glasses, which were exactly where they should have been clipped to the frame of his bed - if this had been his bed. He put them on before he sat up, and then he just sat for a moment, listening. He'd been wearing his uniform at his execution, now he was wearing a loose medical tunic and pants. He looked at his fingernails, but they didn't seem any longer. His skin and hair didn't smell of smoke. He ran his tongue over his teeth experimentally, and found them as clean as though he'd just brushed them - which he had, in his cell.

How long has he been dea – been unconscious? The evidence suggested only a few hours, but somehow he felt otherwise.

He looked around, and recognised one of the tiny Kaled Dome apartments. Very cramped, very bare. The only furniture besides the small metal bed was a small metal chair. Nyder stood up and paced back and forth, thinking. He decided there was nothing to be lost by trying to get out of here.

He looked around but couldn't find any shoes. Truly, no matter he was wearing, he felt naked without his uniform. Especially his gloves. He could pull the sleeves of his too-large top down over his hands, though, and he did so; it concealed the worst of the old scars. He went to the door, certain that it would not open at his touch - and it didn't. But the intercom beside it blinked, and a woman's voice said, "May I enter?"

"What if I say no?" he asked, his voice rough.

"Then I won't come in." The woman's voice was flat.

Nyder stepped back to the bed and quickly went over it, but there was no way to disassemble it to make a weapon. And the chair was too flimsy to be of real use. So he said "Enter," and then got his back to the wall.

The woman who walked in had long black hair, and her face was hidden behind a red mask. One of the Red Hexagon, presumably. Nyder moved forward a step, hands out, judging where to strike - and then the guard behind her raised his weapon, and Nyder relaxed. In a moment, his entire manner changed, from that of a dangerous killer to a pleasant bureaucrat. It was one of his best tricks, and he had practiced it extensively.

"Is the guard really necessary?" he asked, mildly.

"Absolutely," said the woman in the mask.

"Are you here to execute me again - Executioner?" Nyder smiled thinly. He remembered this woman. She had helped him to the pyre. And somehow, it seemed, gotten him out of it alive.

"No. I've brought you something to read." She laid a thick folder down on the bed.

"Couldn't you just have left it for me?"

"No. You are to read it now, under supervision."

Nyder gave the tiniest shrug. It seemed best to pretend to go along with them, so he sat down on the bed and took up the folder. He was a little bit curious as to what could be so explosive that it had to be read under supervision, like Most Secret military reports. Executioner sat in the metal chair, with the guard at her side.

The first page in the folder was his Birth report, spotted with age around the corners, showing his birthday and name-day, distinguishing marks, and so on. After this was something new: a parentage sheet. Parentage? He had never met his parents, had only vague feelings about them. But for some reason, someone had taken the trouble to determine that the people most likely to be his 'parents' (with an error margin of +/- 6%) were both dead. He was probably the 'son' of Lieutenant Otch. Otch. Never heard of him, Nyder thought. After this was a listing of other men born of the same 'mother' as him - why should he care? He turned the page.

A list of names in tiny print: it seemed to be everyone he had ever served with or under, back to the beginning of his military training. And after each name a one- or two-word synopsis of their current condition. Dead. MIA. Dead. Dead. MIA. Returned to Dome. Dead. Dead. Dead.

The type was very small, so he did not spend too much time on those pages. His fingers running down the list did pause at a few names, but he was more interested in what came next. So he turned the page.

Next was a coloured pamphlet. The first words on it were 'WELCOME HOME' beside a sketch of a woman: the words were issuing in a balloon from her mouth. He rubbed the paper between his fingers, and found it to be softer, cheaper than the previous sheet. But it was quite unlike anything he'd ever seen in an official orders folder, so Nyder read this item more closely.

It was apparently a reorientation pamphlet for Kaled soldiers returning to the Dome after months or even years deployed in the Wastelands; this explained the simplified vocabulary. A smiling woman assured him that quarters and meals were free; a blissful-looking Councilman assured him that he would be a valued part of the new post-war society. Gharman - he started, but yes, the line drawing was recognisably Elite Scientist Gharman, down to the streaks of grey in his crisp black hair - said the latest in Kaled technology was at his disposal, to heal every wound, physical or mental. The Daleks were shown only in passing, and labelled as 'internal security forces'; the woman of the Red Hexagon (the face was theirs, but they were now apparently called the Daughters of Skaro) were to be respected, honoured and obeyed. Emphasis on obey.

There was a term he did not recognise, Rollback, used twice in the pamphlet, both in regards to rules or laws.

"Rollback, what does that mean?" he asked Executioner.

"The Kaled Council has reviewed all laws - and I do mean all laws - and nullified all emergency, contradictory, and temporary laws and regulations. The intent is to roll back the legal framework of Kaled society to pre-war levels, therefore, the Rollback."

"That's a recipe for outright anarchy!" He imagined soldiers freed from all restrictions, looting and killing.

"Hardly - there were laws before there was war, you know. And the average Kaled citizen has been deeply conditioned to follow the law."

He stared at the smiling woman on the front of the pamphlet, and confirmed that her face was, indeed, that of a Red - of a Daughter of Skaro. Or rather, one of the aliens called the Reflectionists, who had somehow taken over the world. Presumably the same face lay behind Executioner's mask.

He got to the end of the folder's contents, closed it, and then looked up at his captors. If he had experienced any emotional distress from reading it, it did not show in his face.

"Tell me what is happening in the Bunker," he ordered.

"Davros is doing very well, thank you."

Nyder just looked at her.

She went on, "The labs are being redesigned for peaceful research. Daleks have been assigned to supervise the soldiers coming back from the Wastelands and to handle any battle mad ones. The aliens are gone: the Doctor, the Sullivan and the Smith. Tane is covering your duty cycle, well, as best he can. His physical therapy is proceeding at an excellent pace."

"His - how long has it been?" Tane had broken both legs, high up: he should be months in therapy-

"You have been in stasis suspension for ninety four days, Commander."

Nyder sat there, paralysed. Ninety four days!

"And now you decided to bring me back - why?" Then he thought of something else.

Nyder grabbed his own head with both hands, and starting scratching at his scalp. His bare fingertips were looking for metal, the little metal circles that could be seen set into the skull of Executioner. Neural array implants. He rubbed frantically, retracing the lines of old scars.

"No implants," she said reassuringly. Nyder's hands still kept looking. "Your mind was not tampered with. You are still your own. And as it happens, very few people know of your actual fate. I put you into suspension myself. The only ones who know are the two guards at your execution," and she gestured, showing that one of them was here beside her. "Your life was a very closely held secret."

Nyder stopped scratching and smoothed his hair back into place. "So - I am not legally under arrest, then?"

"No."

"Thank you," he said, and kicked out from a seated position, sweeping the legs of the metal chair out from under her. In the same move he rose and grabbed the guard's gun with both hands, driving the butt into the man's diaphragm and stopping his breath. He briskly twisted free of their falling bodies, took two steps towards the door, and then stopped. He turned and put his back to the wall, and the gun in his hands menaced both of them.

"Does Davros know that I am alive?" he asked.

"No, Commander." Executioner's voice was calm as she drew herself to her feet, and helped the guard up as well. He raised his fists, but paused when she touched his arm.

Nyder freed one hand and reached backwards, to touch the intercom, to demand that they put him in touch with Davros - but his hand dropped. He had other things to find out first. But as soon as these questions were answered, he swore, he would cut every throat in the Dome if that would get him back to Davros' side.

"Why am I awake, now?" That was the most important question.

"There is work for you, work that only you can do. You could resume your old role - if you want it. If you do not want that," she shrugged, "we could give you cosmetic surgery, a new face and name. Or stuff you back into suspension."

"Why would I not want my previous position?" He had been, he was, the Elite Security Commander, Davros' most trusted aide. Why would he want to give that up? They must think he was deranged, he concluded bitterly. "What's happening out there?"

"Give me the gun, Commander, and we can begin to answer your questions," she said, holding out her hand. "It fires tranquilliser darts; you will not find it very useful."

"I could dart you, and then kick you to death," he noted softly.

"Stop threatening her," snarled the guard; his upper lip drew away from his teeth, and his knuckles showed white.

Nyder considered; yes, it probably would be very bad form to threaten one of these women, or any woman really. Women had been rare and precious for as long as anyone could remember; now that an all-female conspiracy was in charge, they would be unlikely to undo this particular prejudice.

He handed over the weapon with poor grace, and watched with narrow eyes as the two of them left, sealing the door behind them. He wondered if they would just not bother returning, leaving him here to die of hunger.

Instead the guard returned with a meal tray; he set it on the bed and was out the door before Nyder could say anything. Just as well.

The food might be drugged. Or poisoned. With reckless disregard he ate it all, cleaning the plate. And with every bite, he imagined having his enemies under his hands, tearing them apart. Devouring their pain like food. He was feeling better all the time.

He depressed the intercom button and waited. It was no more than ten heartbeats before she – one of her - answered, "Yes, Commander."

"Before I make any decision, I want to meet with the leader of the Red Hexagon."

"Why do you want to meet with our leader?" came the sharp reply.

"Just bring me a uniform. And then take me to her." It would be her, he was certain of that.

The uniform arrived promptly, complete with gloves and boots. Familiar boots, his own boots in fact. His name was marked inside. His best boots that he had lost - and his lips suddenly went white - that he had lost when J29A, the mysterious experimental subject who had been the first Reflectionist infiltrator, had made a breakout. She had knocked Nyder unconscious, and made off with his boots. Later they found her, but never the boots.

And here the boots were now. Freshly polished, even.

Did these women keep track of everything? He checked the firearm that accompanied his uniform, and it looked like it had not been tampered with. Of course, there was no way to check without testing it. If he were to meet with the leader of the aliens, perhaps he would get the chance.

 

* * *

 

Executioner came for Nyder in short order, and led him through the Dome, down to the lowest level. Everywhere was the signs of the Reflectionists' work: particle fountains burning away radiation, bulletin boards covered with memos and posters. Giant posters of smiling faces hung over the corridors, promising Peace and Freedom and Democracy and other such foolishness. Interestingly they did not meet anyone on their journey. Which suggested that at least part of her story was true: that he was dead in the eyes of the world. They went through factory spaces filled with strange equipment, all of it thrumming with activity.

She led him through a tunnel carved through solid rock, and into a large dark space. Echoes were the only way to judge its size; he clapped his hands sharply, and heard the echoes bounce back with a significant delay. A very large dark space, he judged. An unseen hand on his chest stopped him, and the vague sense of motion beside him moved forward. There was a glass table in the near distance, illuminated from below and seeming to hover in the blackness, and resting on it were hands, all that was visible of the people sitting around the table. One of those people leaned forward, and he saw, without surprise, the narrow-nosed face that all these women wore.

"Executioner. We are gathered in council, the many and the one. You informed us that you had an answer to the question of who can replace Security Commander Nyder. I hope that you are not going to suggest further adjustments to Esselle, she is already on the point of mental collapse."

"No," said Executioner; only her outline was visible in the lights. "I have a candidate in mind who will be far superior." She raised one hand and gestured, and Nyder moved towards her.

When the light hit his face, it was everything he could have hoped for. The hands flinched away as one, and the one who must be their leader actually gave a little scream, her eyes and mouth wide.

"Executioner, explain - that!" she snapped, pointing.

"That's a Nyder, you may have heard of them. Loyal, ruthless, sadistic - quite a fine specimen of his type," said Executioner, with a laugh in her voice.

"He was executed!" said one of the hidden women.

"No. He was punished. I was to determine his punishment. He has drunk mercy from my hand, and I have spared his life. He is too valuable to burn."

Nyder leaned forward, both hands on the table. The light striking up on his thin, stiff features gave him the face of a skull, with only his eyes alive behind his glasses. He decided, this time, to start with the small questions.

"This isn't Laboratory Nineteen," he noted; the floor underneath his feet was stone, not tile.

"No. We are some distance below that space. We are expanding our own facilities."

"You are the leader of these aliens," said Nyder, and his hand went to his sidearm.

"I am Eleventh Leader, and if you slay me now, Commander, all that will happen is that there will be a Twelfth Leader. If you slew all at this table, we would be replaced within hours. We are the many, and we are the one. We will answer your questions, Commander, but random killing will not serve either of us." Eleventh Leader stared at Nyder, fearless.

"You are aliens, though. Come to enslave us, to conquer us-"

"Why would we travel so far to make you the less? We have come from far away, yes, but we come to let you grow, let you shine. It is that light we seek, not the darkness of repression."

That particular darkness had always been Nyder's second home, and he didn't like the thought of it going away. "So you destroy our rules, take over our Council, end our-"

"Our war, you were going to say, Commander? So possessive, of such a dreadful thing."

Nyder glanced down at the table, then up. "No one has been assigned to my role in the Bunker?"

"No, Commander. Captain Tane and Esselle are doing their best, but - they do not work in harmony with Davros as you did."

"Who is Esselle?"

"Esselle. S.L. Security Liaison," explained Eleventh Leader. Nyder's eyes narrowed in disapproval.

"And why should I not simply shoot my way out of here, up into the Bunker, and take my place again?" He knew that there must be a way to get out of here and into the Bunker. Some lift, some tunnel, so that he could find his way back to where he was supposed to be.

"Before you do, Commander, you must understand the changes in your role. You will not be guarding Davros against the Thal enemy, because that enemy is gone. The hand that strikes at him will probably be Kaled. Every enemy will wear a Kaled face. Although Davros is lauded as the creator of the peace, there are many who do not believe that."

"Perhaps because that is a lie," said Nyder snidely. "You, you made this peace, forced it down our throats!" His fingers hurt from clenching his sidearm, and he consciously relaxed his fingers.

"And there is something else. Something that happened very shortly after your - departure. Davros took the opportunity to destroy a large volume of hidden records, ones that we had not seen. Fortunately we managed to capture copies of some of them, and then give him the originals for the incinerator." A series of large glossy photos were slid across the table; each one was a close-up of a sheet of paper. The first was titled SPIRE PROJECT, and had a list of men's names along with a series of military abbreviations, some sort of a timeline of their careers. The names were Eisel, Lett, Nyder, Marb, Borr, and Nettek. And the six photos after that were of the Birth reports of each of those men. Nyder looked at his own, and then looked closer, and then bent over, close to the table.

"Give me a proper light!" he snapped, and an electric torch was produced for him. He focussed the light on the photo and stared.

It was his Birth report, the same dates, same numbers, same everything, but where it should have said Standard it said Elite.

All babies were tested with machines, their brains and DNA scanned, to determine if they would be destined for the battlefield or for the Dome. Or for the Wastelands, rejected as Mutos before they were even named. If you were Standard you were a cog in the machines. If you were Elite you could be a Dome worker, or a politician, or a scientist. You could even be assigned to work in the Bunker.

He had been born Standard. And trained to be a soldier, nothing more. It was Davros that had raised him to the Elite, assigned him to the Bunker. Every day, he had known that he was unworthy of this honour, that it was only by Davros' will that he was clean and safe in the Bunker, instead of stinking and probably dead in the battlefields. But this Birth report said otherwise.

"This is a forgery," said Nyder.

"Unlikely," said the voice from the darkness. "No, the forgery is the Birth report in your permanent file; the typewriter it was written on was not the one used to write the Birth reports of all the other boys born that week. For some reason having to do with this Spire Project, your category was changed from Elite to Standard. And those five other men as well."

The woman leaned forward, staring at the man at the other end of the table. "And we would very much like to know why." Her under-lit face was demonic as she grinned. "Even if you have to beat it out of him."

"I could never - you can't!" Nyder stuttered with shock. "You can't physically torture him, he's too frail, barely alive as it is…"

"Many things have changed here, Commander." She stood. "I think it's time we took you to see Davros."


	2. For Services Rendered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: thoughts about torture.

Before they took Nyder anywhere, they insisted on showing him a video recording. He sat in front of the darkened screen, trying to ignore the rustlings and murmurings behind him. He did not like sitting with his back exposed.

The recording started with a view he recognised, one of the Bunker operating theatres. His mind quickly tabbed off the names of those present: Gharman, Ronson, some of the Reflectionist women playing at being doctors apparently. And the patient appeared to be - Davros.

"No!" he half-shouted, and rose; hands leaped to his limbs and pinned him back in his chair.

"You must watch this, it's very important," the women said in unison. He sneered, but allowed himself to be restrained. For the moment.

The camera panned to the twin vidscreens on the wall; one displaying a set of brain waves apparently, and the other blank. Then it moved and focussed on Gharman, talking to a man in a General's uniform. Strange that Nyder did not recognise him. He must be another part of whatever this video was: this performance, this masquerade.

The pseudo-General spoke. "People of Skaro, I am General Ferr. As the Kaled people know, I was incapacitated during the Battle of Ges Plateau, six years ago. My body was damaged beyond repair, kept alive only by machinery. Now, thanks to Kaled technology, my mind has been moved into a new, young body. And now, that technology is going to give a new life to its creator."

Ferr? That couldn't be Ferr; the man was a charred lump barely capable of speech. Only prosthetic sense enhancements (originally designed by and for Davros) allowed him to continue being of use to society. But the camera at last turned and showed Nyder what he wanted to see, what he had to see.

Davros - maimed somehow, contaminated. His head was surrounded by a twining mass of metal tendrils, dripping out from around the Kaled implants in his wizened skull. Nyder had seen metal fibres like that growing in the heads of the dead, as the Reflectionists harvested their memories. Before him now, the invading metal tendrils led into cables that reached out to the operating table, where a still figure lay under a sheet.

"What have you done to him!" growled Nyder. He fruitlessly tried to jerk his hand to his weapon.

"Watch, Commander."

Nyder's eyes were wide with horror. He was certain that he was about to see Davros' execution, or worse, to witness his memories and intellect strip-mined and destroyed by the Reflectionists. His breath hitched in his chest as he kept watching. As ghastly as it was, he had to watch. Only that would give him the energy to do what he had to do - after.

The horror continued. The false surgeons used their tools on the patient lying on the operating table. There were machines of unknown design hooked in parallel to the cables leading from Davros to that body. The Elite traitors stood by, not interfering, allowing this violation to proceed. There was a sudden flurry of activity around the table, and the figure there moved.

Nyder's eyes were only for his Commander. Davros sank further down in his chair, and his head drooped on his neck. Behind the slumping figure, the brainwaves on one of the vidscreens were flattening. "You're killing him!"

"This is the past, Commander. This is already done," and Nyder bowed his own head, for a moment, in defeat. Then he looked up; the video image was a bit starry around the edges, but he kept watching.

The dark-haired figure sat up, and Gharman and Ronson moved to the man, grinning like fools. One of the pseudo-doctors said, "Welcome back," as they helped the man to his feet.

Nyder frowned direly at that man: whoever he was (a Reflectionist man it seemed, metal cables streamed from his skull), he would be the first to die when Nyder returned to his rightful place. All of them would die for this, all!

The man said, "That's…thank you," as Gharman handed him a mirror. Nyder flinched. That voice was familiar. A crawling uncertainty came over the Commander. Maybe this was not what it seemed to be.

But the camera pulled back, and there was no doubt of it.

Davros was dead. They had draped a sheet over his head while they worked on the man on the table, and he was terribly still, his single palsied hand unmoving under the sheet.

The edges of the video wavered again, as Nyder's eyes ran. They had killed him!

One of the false doctors spoke. "The transfer has completed. And you have deliberately withdrawn yourself from your old body." And the man masquerading as Ferr agreed. "It happened that way with me too, Davros. Like peeling off some hideous crust."

They were addressing the dark-haired man as though he was Davros. But he wasn't, he couldn't be. This was a trick - of course! This is why it had all been recorded. So they could show it to the Kaled people, trick them into believing that Davros was - was - was still alive.

Nyder was not fooled.

The man looked up at the vidscreens, then at Davros. Then, of course, at his fellow Reflectionists.

One of them said, "If you want to wait for more tests, we can confirm for you that there is no remaining neural activity within that body that was once yours. Only the support chair is keeping him, it, alive."

"That will not be necessary," said the Reflectionist man, shucking the cables from his head with a pass of his fingers. He went to Davros' body and reached under the sheet, and with unnatural deftness his hand went to the life support power switch.

"No," whispered Nyder, in what was almost a whine.

The man whispered, "I do not die. This dies." And he killed Davros.

He pressed the switch, and Davros' body fought for life, thrashing weakly in his chair. An alarum wildly shrilled and then wound down to silence. Davros slumped forward as far as the chair could allow it. The murderer stepped backwards, and casually gestured for the body to be taken away.

Nyder sat frozen in his chair; he felt like his heart had frozen as well. Davros was gone, body and mind. On the vidscreen the murderer turned to the camera, and Nyder's eyes devoured his face, imagining what he would do to this man if he ever caught him.

"My people," the murderer said. "I am alive, and the war is over. We are alive, and we have ended this war. And I swear, I shall lead you in peace as well as, no better, than I ever did in war. Together we will go forward and create a Skaro greater than we have ever imagined."

Nyder convulsed in pain; the women's hands tightened on him again, hurting him, and he welcomed that pain. Everything was pain.

"And what is our part in your future?" said one of the surgeons, pulling down her mask. Her face was Reflectionist, of course. The murderer reached out and drew the surgeon closer.

"You are not the Daughters of Davros," he said. "You are the Daughters of all the Kaled people, of all of Skaro. And together, everything will be changed." He turned his face back to the cameras, and behind him the Daughter winked subtly. Then the screen went dark.

Nyder exploded into action, fighting free only to turn on his captors. They snatched his weapons from his hands; he lashed out anyway, using every fighting skill he knew, using hands and elbows and knees and feet and teeth. He was consumed by the need to kill. The women fought back and fought well. They piled the weight of their bodies on him, crushing him until the breath screamed in his throat. But he kept fighting, fighting past all reason, past all sanity, until the stab of what must be a tranquilliser dart sent him down into complete blackness.

 

* * *

 

"I will kill you all," were the first words out of his throat when he regained consciousness.

"That will not help Davros," was the tart reply. Nyder looked around; he was fastened into a chair at the end of the glowing table, and a Reflectionist sat on the table cross-legged, looking at him. He thought he recognised the arrogant jut of her chin as Eleventh Leader. There were no other Reflectionists in view, but they were probably waiting off on the dark.

"Davros is dead," said Nyder, his voice empty. "You killed him. I saw him die."

"You saw him reborn in a new body-"

"No!" Nyder lunged against his bonds; but they were too tight, giving him no leverage to move. "I can't accept that!"

"Why not? Do you think Davros enjoyed being a crippled fragment of a man? Do you think he wouldn't want to have two arms, two legs, two eyes?"

"You can't persuade me that you managed to transplant his brain," Nyder sneered.

"Of course not, brains are squishy. Very hard to handle, and if you drop one, well. We created a clone of Davros, with neural array implants. He already had surgically implanted taps into his own brain, in order to allow him to use mechanical sensors, and move his chair. It was easy enough to wire the flowmetal to merge with those taps without penetrating or damaging his neural tissue. So he poured himself out of his old body, and into his new one." The woman looked at him, her under-lit features hard to read. "So why aren't you happy for him?"

"Because it isn't true! It's a lie!" Nyder was almost frothing, all his carefully cultivated reserve swept away by fury.

"If it were true, would you be happy?" asked Eleventh Leader.

Nyder paused.

"If Davros had proposed a physical brain transplant, with Elite surgeons to do the actual surgery. If you had watched as he created a new body, invented and tested the necessary surgical equipment, performed experiments on animals and on Kaled subjects, and then transplanted his braincase - would you be willing to believe? Believe that Davros was restored to his original body?"

"I cannot believe that you have done that," Nyder said, each bitten-off word as emphatic as a blow to the chest.

"Why?"

He sat for a long time, trying to find an answer. "I don't know why," he finally admitted, "but I can't." He looked up at his captor, letting confusion show on his face - but this did not tempt her to move within biting range. Unfortunately.

"You do not trust us, therefore you believe that no one could trust us. Well, we earned Davros' trust, and we hope that we can earn yours. In time."

 

* * *

 

They took him under guard through their hidden passageways, up and up using narrow mechanised ladders, and then to a darkened tunnel. Through a dim window (probably a one-way mirror), he saw a Bunker laboratory that had been redesigned for some unknown reason; the layout was tighter than was standard, the tables and equipment closer together. Working alone in the laboratory was a man.

The man was dressed in a white smock and working busily at a lab bench. Dark hair, high cheekbones, a little below average height; he was the strange man from the video. He seemed terribly familiar to Nyder, although they had never met. He wondered darkly if he could smash through this mirror, get into the laboratory and choke the life out of him - but no, he had to wait. Wait until the moment was right, when he could destroy them all.

Then the man reached for a test tube beside him - and the angle of his head, the turn of his hand, hit Nyder like a blow. It was just like Davros, the way his hand would gesture sometimes, ordering one of the Elite to do something. It was so familiar - and yet it was not.

The only sound was the tiny clicking noise as Nyder's glasses touched the mirror. He leaned against it for a moment, and felt it cool against his forehead. "It can't be true," he breathed; his breath formed a little smudge on the glass.

"It is," said the woman persuasively. "A true, complete neural transfer." Nyder could see the wink of metal, implanted sockets under the man's hair. "His old mind in a new package."

"He is one of you, then!" he snapped, eyes showing white all the way around. "A Reflectionist, an alien! Not Davros!"

"No," she said firmly. "We would never tamper with Davros' mind. The Elite tested that body before he transferred, and the transfer was not initiated until his mind print was exactly the same in both his new body and his old. Those brain waves on the vidscreen, in the recording? Only when they were identical in each body was the transfer completed. If we had interfered, inserted part of our Pattern into that empty mind, the brain waves would never have matched. That is Davros, unchanged, reborn."

"And where is his - body?" That shattered shell of a man, which was all he had ever known of Davros.

"He withdrew from it. The brain wave was flat; it was being kept alive only by his chair. He," she coughed, "he terminated that body. He did it, Commander. Not us. You saw. We gave that part of him a proper funeral, at least the organic component. Davros asked us to put the chariot aside for - sentimental reasons."

 

* * *

 

They took him back to Laboratory Nineteen without once passing through the Bunker corridors. A very small part of his mind conceded that this was a good trick; he should order them to provide a map of all these tunnels. The Red Hexagon passkey still clipped to his glove would give him access to all of them.

Most of his mind was preoccupied with larger matters, however. He walked with his fingers trailing along one wall, blinded by more than the darkness.

Could they be right? Was Davros alive? When they got into the laboratory proper, he absently sat in a chair and lost himself in thought. Finally he roused - enough to see that they were waiting to speak to him. Eleventh Leader, and the rest of their Council. And behind the waiting women were others, with tranquilliser guns.

"So. Davros is - back." Nyder thought it best to follow along with their propaganda until he had the chance to prove otherwise. If he could. If he needed to.

"Very much back. And very much in danger, unless you help us."

"In danger from whom?"

"From himself. Did you see the red marks on his right hand?"

Nyder frowned. "Vaguely." He had been concentrating more on the face.

"Davros slipped and burned himself on a hot burner. He cleaned out the wound with barely-diluted carbolic acid to prevent infection, and went back to work." Nyder's neck tendons stood out for a moment, as he imagined the agony of that cleaning. "He does not sleep enough. He refuses to exercise. He skips meals, he ignores sprains and cuts, he evades reporting on his own state. He is driving his new body to its limits, and beyond, and he must stop. And you are the one who can make him stop. By force, if necessary."

"You want me - me, to discipline Davros?" The idea felt like blasphemy.

"Correct. Our analysis of his personality is that if you do this, the shock of your return and your punishment of him will be enough to drive him back into self-identification. You are the one who could give him advice, back when he was crippled, and he would heed you. As he does not heed us."

Eleventh Leader leaned forward, her face intent. "Otherwise, he is likely to destroy the body he is now wearing, and the next, and the next. Understand, Commander: a supremely self-centred personality such as Davros' can be transferred using the neural arrays, but every transfer runs the risk of corruption, data loss, even death. Our minds are designed to move in this fashion, and his is not. He must stay in the body we have given him, he must! He must stop hurting himself!" All of the Reflectionists were speaking in unison now.

"I want to see the personality analysis that says it is safe to put me in a room with the man who ordered me executed, and entice me to punish him."

A piece of paper was promptly handed to him. Nyder looked down at it with a frown, then back to the waiting faces.

"That was a rhetorical statement," he said dryly, but read it anyway. It was a painfully intimate exploration of his personality, and included far too many personal details about his past to make easy reading. But the summary was indeed that he would put the preservation of Davros' life above all other consideration, even at the cost of his own life, even at the cost of physically hurting Davros. "This analysis does not mention the Spire Project."

"We do not know about it. If you wish you may question us, under instrumentation or drugs, to prove this. Only Davros knows about the Spire Project. Only he can answer your questions. If he does, we will both have our questions answered. About the Project, and about the reality of Davros' transformation."

Nyder just sat there, thinking. Would it be possible for one of these Reflectionists to hold knowledge from the others - yes of course, Executioner had. So, if the Davros-copy knew about the Spire Project, it might only mean that he had stolen that information from the original. Which might mean that he was the only one on Skaro who knew about the Project. How can these women expect me to trust them, he thought to himself in exasperation, when they are always one step ahead of me?

Eleventh Leader shuffled her feet. "You don't have to decide right now, Commander. You could rest; sleep on it even. Consult with some of the Elite if you feel that is necessary; they all know the truth about Davros' new body. Would you like food, or drink, or-"

Nyder interrupted. "If I do this thing for you, I want payment in advance. I want Security Liaison." The Reflectionist woman who had been his assistant, his betrayer; watching him, spying on him, all the while working with these aliens to overturn Kaled society and turn it into a shattered distortion of itself. If they were willing to sacrifice one of their own, it would prove that Davros was alive. Or maybe not: he had seen Reflectionists hurl themselves to their deaths to carry out their orders. Individual lives apparently did not mean much to people who shared memories from mind to mind, even posthumously.

Eleventh Leader cocked her head. "The task she is currently assigned to is almost complete. I see no reason why she could not be given to you. Should we bring her to the Interrogation Centre?" That room in the Bunker was filled with the most diabolical torture equipment. "Or perhaps to your quarters?"

"My quarters?" Nyder ruffled his eyebrows. "No reason for me to make a mess in there. Just bring me to her. And bring me a tarp."

The Reflectionists looked at one another, but showed him into a small room just off of Laboratory Nineteen, and there she lay. Security Liaison, wearing the same style of Elite Security uniform that he was wearing: black tunic and breeches, high black boots. The only difference was her plain red armband, and their embroidered collar emblems: his was an eye struck by lightning; hers was a red hexagon. And she was not alone.

She was lying on a specimen slant-board, and sitting head-to-head next to it was another person. A man. Wires came from the sockets in her head and fed into an elaborate machine on the floor, and more wires reached from the machine and disappeared under the bandages that swaddled the man's head. He was bandaged to the upper lip, but Nyder recognised his chin.

"General Ravon," he said softly. Then he paused, and looked at the Reflectionist beside him.

"They can't hear you," she said reassuringly. "We'll have to disconnect Ravon, and take him away." She moved to the unconscious man's side - and was pushed out of the way in a single smooth gesture by Nyder.

Nyder looked down at Ravon, watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest for a moment. "He is actually recovering from a Level One head injury?" Level One injuries usually meant that the soldier in question was recycled for transplantable organs and tissue. Whatever was left would be destined for the food processing plants.

"Yes, and we're saving considerably more of his personality than we thought we would be able to," she said cheerfully. Another Reflectionist entered, and silently laid out a tarp on the floor. With a few deft motions Ravon was unhooked from Security Liaison's wires, and they wheeled the entire table aside.

He frowned down at the unconscious woman. "She looks different. Thinner. Is this really Security Liaison?"

"What, do you think we burned one of us just for appearances?" She rolled up one of the black tunic's long sleeves, showing mottled burns that appeared to be about three months healed. "She has been exercising too much, and eating too little. She is suffering, and she is not handling it as well as she should."

"Suffering from what?"

"From not having you."

Nyder glared at this obvious lie, and the women looked back with clear and untroubled expressions.

"Just push that green button on the neural amplifier to bring her to," one of them said. They left with Ravon, and the door closed behind them.

Nyder was alone with Security Liaison. He stared down at her, drumming his fingers on the table and noting that the sound showed no sign of disturbing her. He considered: he could tie her to the table, and then work on her until he was finished or until her heart gave out - whichever came first. He could wring agony out of living flesh with a simple strand of knotted wire as efficiently (if not quite as cleanly) as he could with the Interrogation Centre's machines.

She was completely helpless, limp, unarmed. He rolled her head to one side, and confirmed that the bruises on her neck had faded. He had put those marks there, trying to kill her - and failing. The bruises on Nyder's neck, from a subsequent incident, were still sore to the touch. They had had no time to heal while he was in the stasis field.

He rolled her head back, and looked at her in the bright overhead lights. He rolled the ball of his thumb absently over one of her closed eyes, trying to judge exactly how much pressure it would take to send it spurting from its socket. Suddenly, because of some trick of the light, or perhaps the weight she had lost, he saw her resemblance to Davros.

He sucked in his lower lip, and his hand flinched back. The angle of her eye sockets, the shape of her ears, reminded him of Davros. And the face of Davros' murderer.

Security Liaison had been created as spare parts for Davros: his gene match, his gender-swapped clone. Plastic surgery had cut her face into a copy of the other Red Hexagon. But Nyder had never seen anything of Davros in her, except for the colour of her eyes. Until now.

He ran one finger down her neck, thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my beta, who noted correctly that Nyder would need considerable convincing that Davros had been moved into a new body.


	3. Questions from the Dark

The Reflectionists were waiting when he exited the room; one of them was clutching a box with needle-tipped tubes dangling from it. Nyder recognised that box; they'd used it on Nenno during his torturous execution, to keep him from escaping into unconsciousness until the last. It was called the infuser, he thought.

He had a sudden lightning chain of thought that flashed through his mind and vanished, leaving behind only the thundering weight of knowledge.

Nenno had been executed for abominable crimes against children.

The Reflectionists infused the heads of the dead with oxygenated chemical solutions, so that they could recover their memories.

They had infused Nenno, as they were torturing him to death. But Nyder had not seen what they did with the body after he died.

They had recovered Nenno's memories.

If they had Nenno's memories, then they must remember what Nenno had done to him. To Nyder himself, when he was only a boy. They must know it all, every screaming bloody detail of it.

Nyder felt stripped, as though his mind had been laid bare to these prying women. His lips were numb, but still he managed to say, "You are not going to have her memories."

"What?" said one of them.

"Take that away," he said, pointing at the infuser box. "You're not going to use it on her. Security Liaison is going to die, all of her, and this time she is not coming back. Not in any way."

The one with the box rose on her toes and looked over Nyder's shoulder. "Well, at least you haven't made too much of a mess," she said, seeing Security Liaison's limp form still lying on the slant-board inside the room.

"You will not touch her. Leave her here until I return."

"Return?" they asked, all in unison.

"I'm saving her for later," said Nyder with something worse than a sneer in his voice.

 

* * *

 

After analysing all the electronic records, viewing the recorded testimony of the Elite, Nyder was almost convinced that Davros still lived. But to be certain, absolutely certain, he needed to see the man. Face to face.

To prepare for the conversation, Nyder put on heavy protective clothing, the gear worn when drilling in full-contact unarmed combat. He sprayed his scarred hands back and front with liquid bandage from the medical kit, paying particular attention to the knuckles. He was patient: he sprayed and let his hands dry, palm and back, left and right, and then left again, and right again. When he was done both of his hands were coated with a thick rubbery layer of sterile, synthetic skin. Enough to keep him from damaging the skin on his own hands - he hoped.

He pulled on the padded helmet, and adjusted it to cover as much of his face as possible; it pressed against his glasses. He added the rough gloves that went with the combat-practice gear, and then paused for an instant.

He had to determine if what these aliens said was true. If the man with the dark hair and Reflectionist neural arrays, with Davros' voice and gestures and manner - if that man really was Davros. And he planned on there being an interval of delay between when he began his interrogation and when he revealed his true identity: the better to judge his subject's reaction. That was part of the point of the helmet, to disguise.

Of course there was another reason to ask for this equipment: there always was, with Nyder. It would not protect him from machine gun bullets, but it would protect him from unarmed attacks. It would gain him time if he were to make a strike for the main laboratory. If Davros was dead, he should open the laboratory console that held the Total Destruct button, and use it. Destroy the traitors who had murdered the Supreme Commander. Press that button, and the preset explosives would be detonated: all would be destroyed outside of that one room.

Destruction or knowledge. That was the choice.

"All right," he finally decided. His voice was slightly muffled by the helmet, echoing in his own ears. "I'm ready. Where are you staging this little intervention?"

"Davros will be walking past Exercise Room Two in nine minutes." She smiled, and continued softly, "We are paying well for this, Commander. Paying with our own flesh and blood. You can make him break a sweat. But if you please, don't break his neck or shatter his skull, hmm?"

"Harder to break a neck than you think," said Nyder, adjusting the lacing that held his combat gloves on. "But bruises, blood, broken bones?"

Her forehead creased in pain. "We'd prefer you not to break his legs," she said stiffly. "The exercise rooms are soundproofed, and the medalert button for Room Two has been deactivated. There will be a full medical team waiting outside, in case you slip."

Nyder touched his gloved fingertips together, staring at something that wasn't there, some picture inside his mind. "Then bring him to me."

 

* * *

 

Davros was walking briskly down one of the Bunker corridors, going to get a piece of glassware out of Supplies. It was such a pleasure, such a relief, to just be able to get up and get whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Never again would he have to wheedle the inferiors around him to get things done, he could do everything! He could do anything, now. And he could do it alone: he'd ordered Tane to have his Security forces keep their distance. He was perfectly safe here in the Bunker; he didn't need tromping guards at his heels day and night.

He cut through the Physical section, and was walking past the exercise rooms when a black-clad arm seized him and pulled him inside. He was tripped and sent rolling across the padded floor, and when he came to his feet he saw the door closing, and heard the ominous click of the lock.

The room was dimly lit, and he couldn't see who was in the room with him. But he could see the glowing medalert button, and he lunged for it and pressed it, repeatedly. That was hard-wired into the intercom system; it would bring doctors, guards-

"Nobody will answer," said a dark figure, moving forward from the door. "Nobody will hear you." The figure was an anonymous shape in bulky garments, masked and gloved. Not a centimetre of skin showed: it might as well have been a robot. For all he knew it was.

"Who are you?" Davros snapped. "How did you get in here?" He didn't recognise this man's voice, but he wasn't surprised: his new hearing was very different from his old mechanically augmented senses. He was going to have Tane's head on a pike for this lapse in…

"Security!" he screamed at the top of his lungs; but the padded walls deadened the sound.

"These rooms are soundproofed, Davros. How did I get here? I am a Time Lord, a traveller in time and space. I have been sent to hear your personal testament of your crimes."

"The Doctor?" No, this man was too short. The Doctor has said he was a Time Lord. He had been a talker, not a fighter. Davros could talk his way out of this.

"No. You can call me - the Master." The figure was close now, and without any warning it swept Davros' feet out from under him and sent him to the floor. He fell on his burnt right hand, but ignored the pain. Pain was to be overcome.

"That is, if you are Davros," continued the Master. "Our records show you as a helpless cripple. Perhaps you are just some laboratory assistant, some insignificant paper-pusher…"

"I am Davros." He snapped to his feet, furious. He had faced these challenges to his identity before, and they never failed to drive him to rage. "Clearly the Doctor has not given you every detail of his little espionage trip here. Unsurprising, considering his miserable failure."

"Failure?"

"He failed to destroy the Daleks. He failed to destroy me! They live, and I live!"

The Master came closer; Davros could not see the man's eyes, but thought he could feel them crawling over him.

"His failure could be rectified. On both accounts. A projectile accelerated to relativistic speeds, falling on Skaro just behind the light of its own passage: your technology would never stop it. Or turning the sun nova, or removing your planet's core and allowing gravity to have its way."

"You have the power to do these things?" Davros' question was quick; his eyes alight as he considered the sort of energies necessary to fulfil these threats.

"We do. But the Time Lords want information. We want to know what went on in your mind, when you decided to create your monsters."

"Why should I tell you anything?" he sneered, and was answered by a blow that sent fiery pain lancing through him.

"Because I will hurt you until you do." The Master stepped forward and Davros retreated. "Tell me about the Daleks. Monsters made from Kaled cells, Kaled embryos, mutated and distorted, exposed to every environmental poison, every contaminant, every combination and level of radiation. How many died?"

"They died so that the Daleks could live!"

"The Daleks." The name was a snarl in the Master's mouth. "A race with all of your worst qualities. Brutal, ruthless, treacherous. Slaves to whoever can give orders. Only a man as weak and fearful as you, Davros, would want to destroy all life in the Universe and replace it with your slaves!"

"I will do," and without warning he punched out, striking at the middle of the other man's chest. This Master was actually a bit shorter than him; all he had to do was knock him down, get past him and to the door.

The attack failed. The Master sidestepped and took Davros' arm in a painful grip, throwing him up against the wall and locking the elbow, twisting his shoulder and wrist until he could hear the tendons creak and the pain started tears in his eyes. He ignored the creaking, the pain, the tears.

"I will see you flayed alive for this!" he said, his voice a little distorted from having the side of his face mashed to the wall.

"I will get what I want from you and then disappear," hissed the Master. "Your walls cannot hold me in - after all, they could not hold me out. Here and now, I am all-powerful. Here and now, I am your God." And the intruder's free hand sunk into the stiffened tendons of Davros' neck, sending new bolts of agony through him.

Davros had decades of experience with controlling the pain inflicted on him by his own betrayed and fragmented body. But to have someone else hurt him was monstrous, was unbearable. He would do anything, say anything to get this creature away from him. And once he was free, he would send this Master to the Interrogation Centre and take everything from him, and his life last.

"And the antecedents to the Dalek project. The Mrim test series-"

"How could you know about that?" The only other man who knew about that was dead. But the Master went on, giving details that nobody should know, about experiments on men and women and children and infants, about Mutos and Thals and even Kaleds being tested to destruction. Every one of his most secret projects: the Time Lord knew them all. And he twisted details out of Davros: dates, times, results. The loss of those secrets made Davros even more determined to kill him.

The Master flipped his prisoner around like a doll, and pinned him to the wall facing him. "One other thing. I am curious about the Spire Project."

Davros didn't think his sudden fear showed. "I don't know what you mean-"

The Master ran one gloved fingertip down his face, found the nerve bundle under one cheekbone, and pressed in, hard. Pressed nerve to bone until the pain forced a cry out of Davros, then eased off.

"Tell me," he whispered. "The litany of your crimes would not be complete without it."

"That trifle? It was a minor experiment, nothing more. I took six promising Kaled infants, changed their grade from Elite to Standard. Sent them through the regular education and service channels, tracked their progress. I was hoping their native intelligence might enable them to overcome their environment. It came to nothing, really. They all died in the battlefield. Being smart won't stop a bullet."

"They all died."

"Yes, a waste of effort. Fortunate that it cost so little-"

The Master's bunched fingers slowly sank into Davros' stomach, choking off his breath. "It cost six innocent lives! Six boys, who would have been Elite, would have been safe! And you killed them!"

"They would have died anyway," the scientist hissed with the last of his breath. "Everyone dies."

"What were their names? Do you even remember that?" The Master removed his hand, and Davros took in a great whooping breath.

"Their names were not important!" Davros grated out. "That experiment is over. Their environment clearly overwhelmed them, without proper training they had no way to use their intellect to save them. That's why the Daleks had to be controlled, had to be trained, at every step! Trained to be more vicious than animals, more brutal than men! Because otherwise their intelligence would be wiped out by some thug with a club!"

"Like you," hissed the Master, and smashed the side of his clenched fist hard against Davros' forehead. The blow sent a bolt of agony through his head. "This is what you fear, force. You were afraid of a force that would be greater than your mind, so you created the Daleks, the ultimate force, the highest intellect - but totally under your control."

The Master released his prisoner, actually shoved himself away from him. He stood there, just a few steps away. His breath echoed in his mask evilly, but he just stood, seeming to stare.

"And what do you think you're going to do to me now?" Davros spat, back still to the wall. Without a reply, the Master stripped off his mask, and stared at him barefaced.

The sight of that face hit Davros like a blow. Sharper and harder than the physical ones that had just been administered. He stepped forward, and the other man - Nyder, it was Commander Nyder, miraculously alive - stepped away. His brown hair was a little tousled, and he dressed in strange heavy garments, but he was there, in the flesh, down to the little red indents by his nose from his glasses pressing to his skin. He was here. Back. Alive.

He seemed shorter somehow - no of course, Davros had never seen him from a standing position. Before, he'd had nothing to stand on - literally. His hands sought each other and squeezed, tight, reminding himself that he was whole again. He moved forward another step, to feel his foot on the floor.

"Keep your distance," Nyder ordered coolly. "I had to hear from your own lips what you did to me. And now that I have." He stopped, and there was something horrible, hatred and fear and pain, lurking just behind his eyes.

Davros actually blinked rapidly, doubting his own vision for a moment. "Is that - this is a trick. Nyder is dead." But this looked like Nyder, unchanged, pale and grim as ever. Grimmer, even.

"I live. No thanks to you," was the reply, and Davros flinched. "I am whole and myself. Which is more than I can say for you."

Davros' breath hissed in fury as Nyder continued, "You aren't even really Davros, are you? You're just a copy, a reflection, of him. Davros is dead," Nyder abruptly stomped one foot, to watch Davros jump, "and it would be mercy to put this shell out of its misery."

"I am Davros. I know you, Nyder. Mercy is not one of your qualities," said Davros, lips tight.

"And we both know why. Don't we. You made me a part of your Spire Project, your experiment - I've seen the names. You lied when you said they all died, when you said you had forgotten them. They were Eisel, Lett, Nettek, Marb, Borr. And Nyder. You did it to me, all of it. You assured that I would never know a moment of mercy or kindness or safety, through all my youth, all my training, all my life." His voice was cold as death.

"Oh, and you think the raising of the Elite is so soft, then?" Davros grabbed the collar of his tunic and tugged it to one side, baring a bit of his shoulder. "You can't see the whip scars, I left them behind with my other body, but I was beaten, I was starved, I was forced on even as you were! Maybe not on pain of instant death, but did that make that much of a difference when I was a child? It is the way things are here-"

Nyder was suddenly right in Davros' face, nostrils flaring, rage boiling behind his eyes. Davros froze, feeling menace bake against his skin like furnace heat. Then his own pride rose up, hot in his throat and steely between his teeth.

"I made you." Davros raised a finger, pointed at his accuser. "I made you; I made you the most dangerous man on Skaro!"

"Thank you," said Nyder ironically.

"I made you and I need you back on duty! Now!"

"And what if I refuse?" Nyder stepped back a few paces, and relaxed, casually crossing his arms. The helmet dangled from one hand. "The Reflectionists have already offered me a new name and face. You would never find me if I chose to leave; they would cover my tracks as flawlessly as they do everything else." His face and tone mocked Davros' distress. "Convince me, Davros; convince me that you need me back. That I can't be replaced by your homicidal mutant-pots."

"The Daleks are," and Davros' brow creased as though in pain. "They are not good enough. They are clever and powerful, but they do not understand all the subtleties, all the nuances. They are designed to be in opposition, to be at war with their enemies, to use and betray any ally, any other force. They cannot be integrated into a society. They are too different from Kaleds, they cannot understand, cannot deal with any problems short of exterminating all involved. They can't protect me. Not the way that you could." His eyes looked to Nyder for approval, and found only indifference. "There are madmen here now, traitors, schemers, all mixed in and intermingled with my people, and all the Daleks can suggest is kill them all."

His words seemed to have no effect on the Commander, and Davros reached down into himself, to find other words. Truer words. "I'm not safe anymore, not safe in this body. My support chair, my chariot, it had backup systems, it could keep me alive for thousands of years if necessary, but this!" Davros hugged himself with both arms. "I could die just from slipping in the shower!"

The last words hurt to get out. "I'm afraid to die."

"If you are so concerned about death," Nyder moved forward and took one of Davros' arms, held his hand to the light and looked at the burns on it, "why don't you take better care of yourself?"

Davros was silent.

"Are you trying to prove that you don't care? That you aren't afraid of being hurt?" Too fast to avoid, Nyder kicked out and Davros collapsed, howling at the pain. He could ignore pain from inside, or random pain from accidents, but the combination of Nyder's presence and his focussed blows somehow made the pain more potent. This was the man he had trusted with his life for years. "Because you should be afraid, Davros. Pain is real; pain is the alarum telling you to man your defences. I know all about pain."

Davros was half-curled on the floor, clutching his thigh. He hissed up at Nyder, "What do you want from me!"

Nyder bared his teeth in an expression that had nothing to do with a smile. "I want you to realise that I am the most dangerous man on Skaro, and I'm locked in this room with you." He waited to let those words sink in. "You will give me what I want, and I will give you what you want. You want safety. Protection. The best Security force on the planet, trained and commanded only to protect you. It's yours."

"What do you want." Davros' voice was flat.

"I want my position back. My rank and title. My authority. And your orders restoring me to that position: you will also order that they cannot be countermanded."

"Agreed. As soon as we leave this room-"

"Also. Security Liaison is mine, to do with as I please. You will not interfere."

Davros shrugged as best he could lying down. "I no longer need the spare parts. Take her."

"And I want you," Nyder leaned down, "to jog twenty times around this room."

"What?" Davros was perplexed. Nyder poked him in the stomach, feeling the tiniest roll of flesh starting to lap over the waistband of his pants, and Davros flinched. He did tend to overeat, when he remembered to eat: much easier just to stuff in the food pills and then ignore the whole subject.

"Twenty times around this room is one standard travel unit. You have a new body. You will maintain it. If I can do it, with all my scars, you can too. It will ease the bruising to your muscles if you stretch them now." Nyder stood, and held out one hand to help Davros up. Davros took that hand, and then swarmed up the arm, punching clumsily one-handed. Nyder emotionlessly knocked him back down, and stood over him.

This time, Davros pulled himself to his feet. Glaring, he kicked off the stiff laboratory shoes, and began to jog. Nyder ran right behind him, urging him on.

 

* * *

 

When Exercise Room Two's door was finally unlocked from the inside, a flood of obscenity came boiling out, followed by Davros, shaking at the sight of the patiently waiting Reflectionists.

"You!" he half-screamed, after he'd run out of vile words. "You set this up!"

Eleventh Leader answered. "We told you it was important to take care of yourself. You challenged us to find somebody who could make you. We succeeded." She noted Davros' sweat-soaked collar with approval.

"You said you executed Nyder!" he said, deliberately lowering his voice with each word so as to not shriek.

"No, we said that we would determine his punishment. He was punished. And now that you have seen how you make do without him, perhaps you will not be so quick to give him up." Davros had been part and parcel of Nyder's pseudo-execution, giving false testimony. Those words had wounded.

"I will, will," Davros seemed to run out of words to express his fury. Instead he turned to the man who stood patiently behind him and snapped, "Commander Nyder. Your position is confirmed; I will issue the orders now. Orders that cannot be countermanded. Return to your duties at once."

He sucked in another furious breath. "But. You will make time in your schedule, Commander, for teaching unarmed combat lessons. You will have one student. Me. No one is ever going to do to me what you just did. Ever!"

"Understood, Davros." Nyder stood with the helmet tucked under one arm, elegant and poised even in his protective gear. "And you should not go lie down right now after your exertion, you'll stiffen up."

The Kaled Supreme Commander spat inarticulately, and left, with an attendant train of Reflectionists behind him. He would do the rest of the day's laboratory work standing up.

"Commander." All of the remaining women spoke, turning to him like the parts of a single machine. "Your analysis of Davros would be appreciated."

"He is a stubborn old man, imperious, defiant, vicious, vengeful, and completely unwilling to acknowledge any of his limits." Nyder's voice somehow conveyed a shrug. "He seems unchanged." He had not seen a single trace of the Reflectionists' characteristic empathy or squeamishness in this new Davros, so either he was unchanged - or they were very good actors.

"The Spire Project?" they asked as one.

"I will give you a summary later." Nyder started to clumsily take off the combat jacket, and hands leapt to assist him. He shook off his gloves, examined his hands for damage. No obvious bleeding, so he methodically peeled the protective layer from his hands, leaving it in little bits around his feet like a shed skin. "I need to see Tane."

"Of course." They whisked him away to one of their tunnels, where he endured being stripped in the dark, then redressed in his proper uniform. For one moment he was tempted to ask them to bring him civilian clothes, take up Executioner's offer to change his face and name and leave this place forever.

He put that temptation aside. Only a fool would give up power such as he possessed. He was no fool. And besides, he still had to settle his accounts with Security Liaison. That would probably involve even more screaming than the chastising of Davros: but he was certain that he would enjoy it more.


	4. Hand Meets Glove

Captain Tane was seated in the main laboratory, at Nyder's desk. He still thought of it as Nyder's desk, and probably always would. Right now he was trying to unravel certain supply irregularities, read three reports from Nyder's spies in the Dome, and work out a schedule that would accommodate the new Elite guards, while making sure each team of them had a seasoned member of his team with them to show them the ropes. Difficult, when most of his men had been wiped out in a suicide attack some months before.

How had the Commander ever kept all this straight in his head, he thought to himself, scribbling yet another note to double-check the warehouses.

"Captain Tane," said a snide voice, and he looked up and absently said, "Yes?" Then his eyes and mouth opened wide, and stayed wide.

He hauled himself clumsily to his feet and stood at attention, the braces supporting his legs clicked and popped. "Yes!" he said, in a slightly strangled voice. It was Commander Nyder, back! But how? Maybe he was - but no, his severely parted hair showed no glints of metal in his scalp. "I thought you were dead, sir!"

"So did I." Nyder's eyes slowly raked his replacement. "I am resuming my position here. Have you received Davros' orders-"

Just at that moment, one of the Laboratory Assistants handed Tane a slip of paper. He read it, and then looked at her and asked, "Why didn't Esselle deliver this?"

The Assistant glanced at Nyder, and left without a word. Tane read that glance correctly.

"Esselle," he saw a certain non-expression in Nyder's face and corrected himself, "Security Liaison, she has been very useful. I couldn't have done this job without her-"

"She is wearing my uniform. Our uniform, the uniform we earned and she has not." Nyder's voice was just the wrong side of mild.

Tane swallowed, and then said quickly, "I have the secure passkeys locked in my quarters, sir. Perhaps we should transfer them back to you now." He dropped his voice and said, "And continue this discussion without witnesses?"

Nyder glanced over his shoulder and met a field of eyes; every scientist in the laboratory had their eyes glued to him. And so did all the guards. Even the Dalek in the corner had its eyestalk pointed to him, like a compass needle.

"We will transfer the passes now," he said, and turned to leave; Tane only had to struggle a little to keep up.

"Why does Davros not have a personal Security detail with him at all times?" he asked.

Tane coughed. "He gave Security a direct order to leave him alone within the Bunker, sir."

Nyder sniffed as they turned a corner. "Some orders have to be clarified, Tane. That is part of your job, to tell Davros when he needs more information in order to give the correct order."

Tane winced. That was easier said than done. Nyder could do it, but nobody else would dare.

In his quarters, Tane unlocked a safe properly bolted to the wall, and handed over the electronic passkeys. Then he looked at the Commander, and shivered inside. Pulling together his courage, he said, "Security Liaison is wearing that uniform, sir, because Davros told her to. He thought it would be a reward for her. And she drew it from Central Stores." There had been enough boy soldiers in the war that there were plenty of undersized uniforms around.

"A reward." Nyder's eyes were too wide, his voice a touch too deep. "The sacred cloth of our military, on the back and the breast of - of a woman!"

"Davros ordered it. And she has deferred to my authority."

"Do you accept that that man is Davros?"

Tane blinked in shock. "Of course, sir. We all saw the videos, two of my - of your men were on guard in the operating theatre. We saw it all. And besides, he hasn't changed. He's just, well, taller. Faster." He mumbled under his breath, "Harder to keep track of."

He looked at Nyder suspiciously. "Are you really Commander Nyder?"

"Of course."

"How do I know that?"

"Because Davros confirms it."

While Tane considered that, Nyder got his next question out. "Do you believe that the Reflectionists are controlling Davros?"

Tane took a little longer to think this one over, and his answer was slower. "No, sir."

"Good. As it happens I agree. We will continue with the transition next duty cycle. I will be reviewing the guards in the morning, see to it."

"Why not now? We are ready, sir." Tane stood straight, his eyes flashing pride. "Everything is as it was when you were in command!"

"In the morning," said Nyder mildly. He turned and left; there was a certain spring in his step, as though he was going to some task of great importance.

Clumsily, Tane went to his bunk and sat down. It seemed that everything was going to change. Again.

 

* * *

 

Back in the Reflectionist's area, Security Liaison still lay on the specimen slant-board, apparently asleep.

"How long will she stay like this?" Nyder asked.

The Reflectionist at his side replied. "Until she dies from lack of water, actually. She has to retreat entirely into her own mind, in order to work with Ravon and heal him. With the machine holding her under, she cannot wake."

"Interesting. Tell me, what is the worst that you can imagine me doing to her?" There was a hint of gloating in his voice. So far as he could tell, it was entirely possibly that they would tell him the truth: some unspeakable torture tailored just to this woman. Maybe even something he hadn't thought of himself. He watched the Reflectionist carefully, judging her reaction.

"You could kill her now, in her suffering, never letting her know that you are still alive." Everything in her words and posture radiated serene certainty; if she was lying, she was doing it well. Then the import of her words sank in.

"I want her to know who is killing her!"

"But if she knows that you are alive, she will be ecstatically happy. She will die in joy. I suppose that you could blind her and deafen her beforehand to prevent her recognising you - but she would certainly remember your smell."

"My smell?" he said, revolted.

"Yes, she adores your smell, do you know that?" Ignoring Nyder's expression, she went on, "She dreams of just lying beside you, laying her head on your shoulder and-"

"Enough!" he snapped. "You aren't going to taunt me into killing her out of hand."

The Reflectionist looked a bit put out at this. She put down the water-bucket she was carrying beside the table, and laid a hacksaw across it. "It seems a shame that we will not have the opportunity to reclaim her final memories, but that is a price we are willing to pay. You might have to shake her awake after you turn off the amplifier, she is very tired. There's a full interrogation kit here," and Nyder glanced over at the wheeled metal cabinet waiting for him.

She went on, "And after you're done, just saw off her head and drop it in the bucket. You can bring it down to the incinerator room yourself. Everything that she is will die with her. As you requested. And she won't drip all over the floor along the way." She left, and the door slid shut behind her.

Nyder looked at Security Liaison, and then at the bucket and the saw. Quickly he searched her, coming up with a number of small concealable weapons and devices of unknown function; she showed no signs of waking as he rolled and positioned her. He piled the weapons well out of reach, and then returned to look down on her.

He actually considered cutting out her life now, while she slept. But instead he reached for the green button.

She sent me to my death, he thought. She stood there and watched Davros sentence me to death, for my failure.

His hand paused for an instant, remembering something else: how she had silently mouthed that he had never failed Davros. That Davros had failed him. Then he pushed that aside, pushed all temptations of mercy aside. He pushed the green button, and the amplifier's electronic hum slowed to a nodding beat, and stopped. He watched Esselle, his hands still at his sides now.

She showed no sign of waking; only her breathing deepened a little. His eyes carefully studied her face. Her hair in a dark puddle under her head, her slightly slack lips, the lashes still against her cheeks. Then there was a hint of motion.

Her nostrils flared subtly and then wide as she breathed in, one deep breath that seemed never to end. Her eyes flew open, and her mouth, and she stared up at Nyder with her face a comical set of circles: eyes, nostrils, and mouth.

He had thought of what to say when she awakened, but suddenly realised that he had neglected to tie her. Careless of him to underestimate her that way; she might be female, but he had felt firm muscle under his hands as he searched her. She might be able to fight her way free of him.

"You will not move," he said, reaching for the cables from the amplifier.

She didn't. Instead she closed her eyes lightning-fast, and her face fell into a series of measured tics and twitches as her eyes rolled madly behind her lids. He paused, fascinated despite himself, and then her eyes opened again.

"My mind is undamaged. My integrity, my neural balance. I am not mad." Her voice was a mix of delight and bafflement. "So how is it that I see my Commander before me?"

"Your Commander?" he snapped.

"They," and her face paled. Her round mouth suddenly was a square snarl, her teeth like blades. Her expression was a frozen mask of rage as she snarled, each word rasping in her throat. "They. They took you away to be executed. They sent me away, so that I could not watch, and try to rescue you. They hid you from me. My sisters, and they took you away and they said you were dead and you were alive. Alive!"

She threw her head back and screamed, on and on and on, like her heart was being torn out. Her back arched against the slanted table. Nyder couldn't help but wonder if this chamber was soundproof, and then reflected that screams were probably expected anyway.

"I will, I will, I will," she wept, and then clenched her fists to her temples, panting in fury. Deliberately she calmed herself, drew in her emotions. It was like watching a boiling pot filmed in reverse, as she cooled herself, pulled the mask of rationality over her features. But Nyder had seen the madness behind that mask, and he measured it in his mind, considered it.

She seemed in a daze as she whispered soft and fast to herself, "Life is the great indulgence; death the great abstinence; savour this pain which is better than the eternal numbness of-"

He slapped her to get her attention. Just his fingertips against the side of her cheek, near her mouth. Not hard enough to do more than sting, but her focus was returned to him, so hard and fast that he could almost feel it pressing on his skin.

His own gaze pressed back, furious. "Your people have given you to me, Security Liaison, to do with as I will. And I will make you suffer. Every torture that I know, that I can imagine, and more. Pain and more pain. Your complete destruction and final death. I will make you regret that your people ever let me live."

"I will never regret your life," she said, her eyes rapt on him, drinking in the sight of his face. "Never. Not even you can do that, Commander."

He raised his chin and stepped back, to the interrogation kit. From it he took a long metal rod, and showed it to her. "Do you know what this is?"

"It's a flexprod. It's quite painful to be struck by one," she said expressionlessly. "I know."

"How?" Nyder asked. Tane had said she had deferred to him, but-

"You used it, sir. On J29A."

"I don't believe that." He stepped forward, the prod held out in front of him, until the two metal contacts were a finger width from the centre of her chest. Hitting her there would send her diaphragm into convulsions and possibly kill her. "I can't believe that."

"Believe what?" she asked, making no move to defend herself. Her arms were relaxed now at her sides.

"That you have the memories of J29A. I saw her die. I was there." These Reflectionists said they took memories from the dead, but they couldn't have those memories.

"I was also there." She rolled her head to one side, and asked, "Do you remember her last words to you? She said, 'Commander Nyder? I'm sorry that I kicked you in the head.' "

Security Liaison's eyes were wide with recollection. "And then she said, 'I forgive you. I do not die, this dies.' " Her eyes gently shut.

"Stop!" shouted Nyder. J29A had willed herself to die with those words; he had no intention of letting Security Liaison escape him so easily. Not that there was much he could do, if she disobeyed him at this point…

She opened her eyes. "You do remember, then."

"If you remember my killing - you," he paused, "how can you allow me to live?"

She shrugged, her uniform scratching against the table under her. "You act as though you are the only one who ever managed to kill one of us. Since you still live, it is the consensus opinion of the many and the one that you are so valuable that we will pay the price of carrying that memory, and bearing your presence."

"Davros is that valuable?" They had released him from stasis for Davros, after all. Would they really endure a man who had murdered one of them, or all of them in memory? Then again, Nyder remembered being thrown on the pyre.

"Davros will change the universe. He is more precious than this planet - literally; if this entire planet and all on it were destroyed, and he was saved, we would count that as a victory."

"Provided of course that one of you was saved as well."

"Of course." She glanced at him from under lowered eyelids. "And the man who stands at Davros' side while he changes the universe will be in a unique position of power. No one will be able to challenge him."

"And you of course would be the one behind that man," Nyder sneered, contempt heavy in his voice.

"You know," she said conspiratorially, rising towards him a bit. "Now that I consider it, I can think of one way that you can truly, totally, make me suffer."

"Dismiss you from your position?" he guessed, and smiled at the pain those words inflicted; he could see it in her eyes.

Her voice was cold. "Kill yourself."

Nyder's throat locked shut and he stepped back, as though her words were poison.

"Because while you live, I am happy." She pushed herself up from the slant-board with her elbows, and stood looking up at him. With a swift stroke of her fingers through her hair, she sent the amplifier cables clattering down around her feet; it was almost exactly the same gesture that Davros had used in the video recording.

"We'll see about that," he muttered darkly, wondering what agonies he could impose on her in the days and weeks to come. Of course he could just stuff her into a specimen holding cell, torture her to death slowly while letting somebody else do her role - but she was so good at her role. She was the perfect assistant for him. Irreplaceable. And he certainly wasn't going to ask these aliens to make another one of her. Although if he did, maybe he could make them fight each other…

"I'm sorry," she said, out of nowhere.

"Sorry for what?" he said, turning back to the interrogation kit.

"That I could not protect you."

"I'm sorrier," he snarled, slamming the flexprod back into its bracket with unnecessary force. "You let them…you let them kill me!"

"I begged them not to. But it was the only payment that Davros would believe in."

Nyder turned and scowled. "I don't follow."

"He knew that he would be helpless during the transfer process from body to body. That he could not do the transfer without our expertise. And he would be infinitely indebted to us afterwards. We were making an offer that he could not afford to refuse. He wanted to pay the appropriate price, a price that we could not refuse, and that was you. You were the price he paid for his new body. He volunteered you, in fact. He said, 'A treasure is worthless until it is spent' - and that treasure was your life. I guess you are what he values most, after the Daleks."

Considering how Davros felt about the Daleks, that actually left quite a bit of room for being valued. A lot of room.

"So." She dared to smile at him. "Will you be killing me now or later, sir?"

"Killing you now would be much too quick."

"And you yourself feel no urge to swallow poison, hang yourself from the rafters, stick your-"

His fingers slashed through the air in a sharp gesture, cutting off her words, and she fell silent.

"Follow me," he ordered. "I want to see the look on their faces when you walk out of here alive." She moved to follow him, and there was a sudden spectacular clatter. She looked down, nonplussed, at the metal bucket that was rolling away from her feet. She had kicked it.

"Why," she paused, and picked up the hacksaw. "Why is there a bucket here?"

Nyder told her, with a bit of relish, "The Reflectionists were going to let me saw off your head after you died, and incinerate it. Destroy your neural array, and all your recorded memories."

That wounded her; her face tightened, and she put down the hacksaw with a bit too much precision. Her face was still tight as he opened the door and stepped out.

The looks from the waiting Reflectionists were sullen as he left the room. But when Security Liaison appeared, those looks changed. Confusion and then fear, sympathy, misery. Gasps of terror, eyes suddenly wet with tears as they realised that her torment was not over, that it had only begun. He approved, and let his knowledge of their pain show on his face.

"Stasis field," Security Liaison said to the room in general, and several of the women nodded guiltily. "Unclean female animals," she cursed under her breath as she left at Nyder's heels.

Security Liaison saw him to his quarters, following him like a new recruit desperate for attention, and asked, "Will you require anything else tonight, sir?"

"No," he ordered, flexing his fingers in their gloves. "Report for duty as normal in the morning."

"Wait!" she said before he could close the door, and rummaged under her tunic. Her hand came out with a small flat box, which she handed to him. He recognised that box; it was the official case for his medal. The medal he'd worn to his execution, and not seen since. He shook the case, once, and heard enamelled metal chink against the sides.

"Why do you have this?" he said, carefully tucking the medal away into his own pocket.

"Executioner gave it to me after your - death."

"And you've been carrying it all this time?" She had not left his side since he woke her.

"Yes."

Nyder had no reply to that, so he simply stepped back into the room. The door closed between them.

 

* * *

 

Esselle sucked in a deep breath after the door closed.

Nyder alive. It was like regaining half of herself, that part of herself that had been silent and grey and cold for these long weeks without him. Now she felt like she'd just thrust her hand into an electrical current. But rather than withdrawing that hand, she wanted to let the current crackle through her, flame along her nerves and fill her with power. Inside, she swore that she could feel her soul swelling with new life. She closed her eyes and wished, wished with all her might, that she might stay at his side, every day, for the rest of her life.

A lewd part of her mind couldn't help but remark that while being at his side was all very well and good, being under him would be better. Or on top of him. Or-

Then her face fell, as she realised who she would have to talk to next. If talking was the right word for it.

Ravon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Life is the great indulgence" - Esselle is quoting Anton LaVey.


	5. Another Sleeper Awakens

Esselle had gone into Ravon's mind, where she sat on a fence post.

It wasn't really a fence post, of course: it was a representation of a portion of his mind. It happened to look like a white field, softly mounded with snow. Arrayed across it was a neat grid of solid fence posts, and strung between the posts in not-quite-perfect alignment were heavy wires, tarnished black with time. The wires hummed sometimes, even though there was no wind.

She knew that even though her 'self' was here, her physical body was lying on a table in the Bunker, beside the table that held Ravon. That the neural amplifier was letting them exchange thoughts and impressions - letting her enter into his mind.

Esselle remembered when she had first reached into the newly broken Ravon. A bullet had shattered his skull and taken away a fair amount of his actual brain tissue with it, and after his physical condition has stabilised and the neural array implants had healed, she had been assigned to find out what was left of 'him' inside his head. Then, his damaged mind had been a black, crawling clot of pain and fear and loss. Her own term for it (which she would never repeat to him) was the Hairball: something wet and stinking and decaying that should never see the light of day.

Eventually, as new neurons formed and joined with each other and with the implants, there were great blank expanses in the Hairball: places where Ravon was not, and would never be - unless she found a way to bring together the shards of his personality, and make him a person again. Part of the Reflectionist integrity-matrix had been implanted here, in those white areas: but unless he voluntarily merged with them, they would be of no use.

She tried talking to Ravon's mind, and got no response. She tried singing, and brought forth a ghost of him, a shell that would sit and watch, and vanish as soon as she paused to speak. The ghost could not speak: it was not enough of him.

She tried dancing, she tried poetry, she tried argument, she tried orders, she tried hallucinations, she tried tickling, she tried playing with his sensorium like it was a toy, and there was no cohesion. She could not call out enough of him to talk with, to tell him what had happened.

She had gone into the Hairball, crawled and shoved and pressed through every stinking centimetre of it, figuratively combed through it with her own mind, and had not found him. But she wasn't willing to give him up yet. He was still in here - somewhere.

One day, she went into his mind. Hovering in blank whiteness, an obvious motif presented itself.

She waved her hand and created a tin soldier.

A wondrous tin soldier, with elaborate gear joints and correct insignia painted on his uniform and a tiny tin bayonet sharp and gleaming on his tin rifle. She wound the tin soldier up with a key produced out of nowhere, set him down on the 'ground', and watched him march.

And Ravon was there! A uniform-blue smudge for a body, a flaming red smear for a head - but it was him, his personality, his self, as he snidely criticised, "You can't have just one, you know. An army isn't just one!"

She turned to him, excited at this response, this acknowledgement of her presence, at last. "But you can make as many as you wish."

The redness (blood and flame) nodded down, and he ordered the tin soldier, "Be - be five of you!"

And it was so. Five tiny tin soldiers, neatly marching in a row. Ravon clapped his hands, and they were solid enough that the clap actually made a sound. "And now be five hundred! Five thousand! As many as there can be!"

The white expanse was filled with an endless sea of marching mechanical men. Ravon's face suddenly wavered like a candle flame at the top of his mirage-self, and he ordered in a shout, "Attack the enemy!"

The marching men kept marching, but only in place.

Esselle said, "Ravon, everything here is you. There is nothing here, except you. There is no enemy for them to attack."

His face swept towards her, and grew transparent: she could see the fire flickering behind his eyes. The enraged eyes of a general, the confused eyes of a boy: the same eyes. "You are here," he said slowly. Then he looked around, at the great billowing masses of blackness that roiled outside of the white space.

"I am not your enemy," she countered. And she tugged an invisible cord, her mind line; reassured herself that she could withdrew this extension of her personality from Ravon's mind faster than he could catch it. It would not permanently damage her mind to have this bit of her cut off and destroyed, but it would be painful. And it would hurt Ravon too; as it disintegrated inside him, it would probably merge with his own mind in very strange ways.

"Why are you here?" he said. "Who are you?"

"My name is Esselle. I am here only to help you. To heal you, if I can."

"I don't trust the Daughters of Davros," he hissed. The face she wore was familiar to him, familiar and hated. "Where am I, anyway?"

"You have taken a Level One head wound, Ravon. To save your life and your mind, we had to stimulate the growth of new brain tissue - which is blank of course. Which is this," and she gestured to the white space. "You are unconscious, seeing and hearing a projection of me through new neural array implants. But you have no experience in the rebuilding of your own mind from the inside. So I came to help you." Her face suddenly rose in a bitter smile. "I had some free time on my hands, you see."

"Is that a storm?" he asked, pointing at the blackness. "I saw something like it, the first night I was in the Wastelands - the rain was cold, bitter cold. And the clouds looked so solid, like they would never move."

"That is you, Ravon. Your memories, your personality, your feelings - all are there. Although they aren't in very good order, right now."

"I don't believe you," he snapped. "Go away!"

And she did go away, vanishing back into her own mind. And returned in a few seconds of time: seconds that had stretched out to long hours in the time of the mind, and in Ravon's mind.

"May I come back?" she asked.

"No!"

She asked again and again, and each time he said no, sent her away. Then one time she came, and asked, and heard only weeping. She moved her 'self' to the edge of the white space, and found Ravon's self sitting there, weeping, coiling and uncoiling a great black clot of memory from the darkness.

"It's awful!" he said, staring up at her. "It's all so miserable, and it's everywhere! I can't get away, every time I step out of here it's all over me, it itches and it hurts, everything!"

Esselle knelt down beside him, projected caring and understanding and empathy with her face and movements. "Ravon, you need to learn to organise your mind. I will help you, every step of the way. For now," she looked at the blackness in Ravon's hands, searing his fingers, and saw there the fear and nausea and horrid, sick joy of his first kill, "why don't we put this away?"

"I can't," he whispered. "I can't break it, can't tear it, can't bite it." His ghost-lips were smoking from the poison of the memory he had been handling.

"Yes, but you control this place. Let's - let's lock it away." With a gesture, she created a great gleaming half-sphere of blue glass in each hand, and carefully pulled the tuft of evil memory into it, sealing it away. She let it go, and it boiled within the glass, but could not escape. "There now," she said, satisfied. "It is still there, but it won't hurt you unless you break the glass. And you can do that, whenever you want. Or you can leave it there, forever. You can shrink it, you can burn it, you can make the glass opaque, you can mark it so that you will always know what is behind it. You can control yourself. You can."

Ravon laid his hands on the glass, stared at the writhing thing inside. "Does it have to be blue? No," and he concentrated. Under his palms, the glass flashed to blackness, like a giant eye staring at them out of the tangled knots of his mind. Ravon touched the ball again, and it shrank, to the size of his head, to the size of a pinhead. "Too small," he murmured, and made it about the size of his fist. He let it go, and it hovered in front of them, and then fell to the 'ground' with an anticlimactic thump.

Then he turned to Esselle and smiled, all flashing teeth and bright eyes, and announced, "We'll do more!"

And they did: together they went through his mind, consolidated his memories, found endlessly replicated nightmares and turned each one into a single point of thought, and locked them away. Great expanses of his mind that had been choked with fear and pain were opened, and started to show signs of new growth. Positive memories, what few there were, were given room to spread and shed light on the memories around them, brightening his mind. The great disordered heap began to order itself around the integrity-matrix, and draw itself together into one person, one wholeness, one Ravon. It was as wonderful as watching a child grow up, all happening over a span of hours (although the hours she spent in Ravon's mind were only minutes in the outside world; here everything moved at the speed of thought - literally).

Of course he had lost much. Memories that had been destroyed by the bullet. For some of those memories Esselle could, oddly enough, offer replacements.

The Reflectionists used the neural arrays to move thoughts between living brains. They also infused the heads of the dead with flowmetal, which merged with the brain tissue and allowed extraction of memories. Broken memories in many cases, and certainly nothing like personalities.

But for certain places and times, she could show him what another soldier had seen: the heroic Ravon leading the battle, his clever strategies giving them victory, his passing word in the night giving strength to the wounded, courage to the fearful. She was careful to mark these memories as being copies from another perspective, the equivalent of notching a card in the deck. If he started to think that those memories were something he had actually experienced, it could unbalance his frail personality, possibly even shatter it.

It hurt her terribly to tell of Nyder' death. And it hurt him too. They had cried together for three endless days, and the sky of his mind had wept black tears. Then on the fourth day Ravon was smiling and happy - too happy. "Enough of that," he said. "Mustn't mourn too much for any fallen soldier. We all have to fall sometime."

She worked with him to till and groom his mind, and when they were done with that day's labour, mentioned that she would be grieving still, later.

"Shouldn't do that, girl," he said, tsk-tsking. "A good soldier knows when to give up their dead."

"I'm not a good soldier," she snapped, and coils of darkness seemed to writhe around her own head with fury. "I'd be a miserable soldier. And Nyder is still new-dead to me, and I will mourn him as long as my heart wishes it!" The tears that were starting to run down her cheeks were tinged with black as well. "And if you will not grieve with me, if you are done, then I am glad that the cup of your grief is so shallow, but for me I shall still drink it down."

Before the sky had wept: this time the sky itself fell, with the weight of Ravon's mourning thundering down on both of them like a rain of liquid iron. The grief for all the soldiers, friends, lovers. All the men Ravon had sent to their deaths, and then stopped his grieving for each of them, choked it away, after the mandated three days. Now he grieved for all of them, and most of all for Nyder, terrible aching grief. And he and Esselle drank deep of that grief together, let it wash through them, let it run its course.

And now.

And now.

Now, after all that long agony of mourning, she would have to tell Ravon that Nyder was alive. Would he ever forgive her? She doubted it. She still was finding it hard, pin-sharp hard to forgive her sisters. That even one of them had known he lived, and given her those long weeks of pain without Nyder, that she had made Ravon suffer in his turn…

She had hurt Ravon. So. She would tell him the news, and if he wanted her to leave him, she would do so. His personality had been nailed firmly to his backbone, as it were: he was self-focussed and stable. He was considerably saner than he had been before he was shot, in fact. He could take the shock.

She hoped.

She reached down with a foot and touched one of the wires, and it hummed: the other wires took up the song, a thing of thrumming deep notes. Ravon had made this place: the snow that showed every track, where no one could move without being detected: the posts and the wires representing - trenches? Safety? She wasn't quite sure. But it was his place. And now, the dark jungle around it was lighter, and overhead there was almost the hint of a sky.

Ravon came through the wires to her, and stood at her side. He was wearing his blue military uniform, but the insignia seemed to be running, smearing a bit, as his self-image slowly decided that he was not going to be a General again. It was true: even with his mind whole, the connections between it and his body were rather tenuous. They had saved his sight and hearing, fortunately, but he had years of hard physical therapy ahead of him to learn to pilot his body again.

"I came to tell you some bad news," said Esselle.

"How bad?"

"I - I think I might not be your mind-healer anymore, after I tell you."

Ravon's face sagged. "That's very bad. Are you - sick?"

She looked away from him. "No."

"Liar." He said that softly, and endured the gaze she shot at him. "I've felt it in your mind, sometimes. The wish for death. Do you think I've never felt it, that I wouldn't recognise it?" He moved closer. "Are you going to die?" But his words also asked, are you going to kill yourself.

"No, I don't think so," she finally answered. "But - I feel very badly about this news. It's going to hurt you terribly. I - I have hurt you, unnecessarily. While I was healing you. I have given you false knowledge that I did not know was false."

"Bad intelligence," he said neutrally. "Go on."

She closed her eyes and said, "Commander Nyder lives."

Silence. She went on. "The execution was a charade. Executioner put him in a stasis field, and when she decided the Reflectionists needed him, she just pulled him out and put him back to work. Sh-she never told anyone. She never told me." She laughed and cried at once, a single cry. "So he's back."

Silence. She opened her eyes to look at Ravon, and then opened them wider; his head was flaming, great red streamers of fire that looked horribly like blood draining out of him. And he seemed to be growing more transparent, hazier-

Oh no. "Ravon, no, please, stay. Ravon, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to-"

The haziness exploded into light, white light that smashed into her, hurtling her off her perch and into an endless expanse of brightness. She seized on her mind line, preparing to withdraw. But she hesitated an agonising moment.

That moment was long enough for Ravon to find her.

He grabbed her and his hands and his mouth and his body all shouted Joy! Joy! Joy! The skies boomed with light and thunder and laughter, as he grabbed her and shouted wordlessly, a primal yell of pure happiness.

"Alive!" he shouted and wept, eyes wet, light streaming from him. He picked her up by the elbows and spun her around in the air, and she laughed with him.

When he finally put her down he embraced her, his hands running up and down her back, pressing her against him. "He's alive," he whispered.

"Yes," she whispered back. "And I am sorry, I am so sorry, that I deceived you. I did not know."

His body tensed against her. "And now I suppose you shove the cripple aside, and stand at the Commander's side where I should be!" Ravon snarled, rage burning suddenly in his eyes. He shoved her away, matching words to action.

She staggered backwards a step and then stood, the tears fading from her cheeks. Inside she winced, remembering Ravon's reaction when she had explained to him why her self appeared here in an Elite Security uniform; apparently that had impinged a bit too closely on certain unspoken wishes of the furious man before her. "I will not do that. It is for him to choose, and it's a very strange new world out there. Everything has changed, for everyone. The war is over. And neither of us knows which way his heart will fall." Esselle was sadly certain that whatever Nyder had for a heart was deeply bruised and wounded - and doubted that any of it was devoted to Ravon.

"He'll choose you," he said flatly. "You're a woman." That last word was spoken half with contempt, and half with something approaching awe.

"He might choose you. You're a man. An exceptional man, who has had his mind balanced and trued as though it were the finest weapon."

Ravon perked up at this praise, and she continued hopefully. "But if you want to be chosen, you will have to come out. Take control of your body again." She had spent long hours working the unconscious Ravon's muscles and joints, performing manual therapy, but he had not been very interested in reintegrating himself back into the real world. Perhaps Nyder would be enough reason to bring him back.

It had been enough to bring her back to life, after all.

"Come out," she invited. And she waited to see what he would do.

 

* * *

 

Ravon closed his eyes, his dream-self's eyes, and concentrated.

You are smoke, he told himself. You are spirit, expanding, permeating your body, moving back into your body. He was distantly aware of Esselle withdrawing herself from his mind (the one time he had dared follow her, peer down her mind-line, he had seen a gigantic sphere of crystal palaces, every angle reflecting the other, perilous and beautiful). But now he reached out, into himself.

Again and again he fell backwards, contracted to a single point of self. It was safer to stay inside his own head. Outside was dangerous, fearful and unknown. But he clenched his will tight, that will that had driven him all his life, and forced himself on. On and out.

And slowly, awareness of his body returned.

He felt himself, his own flesh again: back pressed to a table, a remarkable collection of pains in his head, in his ears and sinuses and eye sockets. He felt like his head was an over inflated balloon that had sprung a leak. Bandages pressed against his face, and there was a twisting itch over his scalp. Limp and dragging exhaustion through the rest of his body. He breathed and tasted sharp medicinal smells on his tongue. The real world was around him that he had not felt since - the thing that he had forgotten. Since the bullet.

His lips moved - he thought. "Dream?" he tried to say. This was like waking from a vivid-seeming dream, only to find reality a thousand times heavier and brighter and realer around you.

Another sensation: cloth moving over his skin, a body leaning next to his against the table. A body that was small, and somehow softer than that of a man. Esselle.

She slid her hand under the edge of the bandages, and cupped the side of his face with one hand. Carefully rolling back the edge of the bandage, she whispered in his ear, "No dream. He lives. And you live."

Ravon could hear those words: a bit fluttery, but he could hear them. He could feel her touch on his skin. He couldn't raise his hand, but he could close it when she slid her own palm against his.

"We live," he corrected her, his voice croaking with disuse.

Their hands clenched. "We live."

**Author's Note:**

> Events in this story follow directly from my AU 'Dawn of the Daleks', not from 'Genesis of the Daleks.'


End file.
